Subjective-Relation: Rejecting the Binary
The Moral Reasoning of Green 💚6/8
💚Green “considers the human element.” It is a response to the de-humanizing problems of 🧡Orange, including money over people, thinking over feeling, the treatment of humans like cogs in a machine (or numbers on a spreadsheet), a loss of meaning, existential anxiety, and the failures of materialism and capitalism. Green is also a response to global connectivity, with the goal of respecting many cultures/perspectives and facilitating harmony of the global ecosystem.
Thus, Green moral reasoning emphases 💚subjectivity and 💚relations.
Subjectivity & Emotions
Subjective truth refers to the truth found within the subject (aka the subject’s experience), while objective truth refers to the truth found in objects.
While Orange considers the 🧡context (not just the 💙absolute law) — Green zooms-in further to the individual 💚person and how their lens shifts moral framing. By Green reasoning, two people in the exact same situation could make totally different decisions, and both decisions could be “right,” because each person has a different 💚perception, 💚cultural upbringing, and personal 💚calling or 💚conviction.1
This emphasis on the subjective experience includes a resurgence of respect for the 💚emotional experience… incorporating 💜Purple (What feels right? / What feels comfortable?) and ❤️Red (What do I desire? / What makes me happy?).
What makes Green’s emotional focus unique (from Purple or Red) is that the morality of personal emotional experience is analyzed 💚inter-subjectively (or relationally), considering its impact on the local community, other communities/cultures, and those on the margins. (e.g. Would that make someone else feel uncomfortable? Would it perpetuate privilege or systemic harm?)
In the Christian world, Green moral reasoning is especially expressed in the 💚personal calling that individuals experience and the role of 💚conscience. In Catholic doctrine, “primacy of conscience” asserts that our conscience is binding and to go against it is to sin. Another example of Green reasoning is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans, as he discusses whether certain days are sacred or not: “Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it for the Lord. Also those who eat, eat for the Lord, since they give thanks to God, while those who abstain, abstain for the Lord and give thanks to God.” (Romans 14:5-6 NIV)
Relationality & Values
Green moral reasoning often justifies through relations:
💚Relational Values: Red thinks it’s obvious that everyone wants to be ❤️happy, while Green thinks its obvious that everyone (if they are socially adapted) wants 💚peace and 💚harmony. Thus Green appeals to harm-reduction, healing, compassion, comprehensive care, equity, empathy, and communication — things which promote harmony. I particularly appreciate the utility of Rosenburg’s work on Non-Violent Communication (workshop lecture).
💚Social Construction: Green moral reasoning acknowledges the socially-constructed nature of morality. Thus there is some some sort of engagement with 💚moral relativism and 💚pluralism. For some, this means morality is “made-up” and not real, and thus they reject morality entirely, believing it doesn’t really matter what you do.2 This can be seen as complete rejection of the right-wrong binary Blue established. However, even if it’s socially constructed, morality certainly is real to us (which is what Green cares about anyway), and that means there’s a way to do it well, and a way to do it wrong, and part of the moral imperative is to construct better and better moral systems! Thus, even from a social constructionist perspective, Green has grounds to defend and promote a positive morality that leads to flourishing.3
💚Relational Ethics: Green reasoning may see relations themselves as the ontological grounding of reality and/or morality. Examples include post-modern ethics (morality emerges from collective narratives rather than divine or natural law), I-thou morality (Buber: “All real living is meeting”), process philosophy (Whitehead: “There is no ‘thing,’ only interaction”), and ubuntu philosophy (“I am because we are”).4
💚Process Over Product: Finally, a unique focus of Green relational reasoning is that of process over product. Generally speaking, Blue is concerned with the 💙ideal, Orange with the end 🧡result, and Green with the 💚method. Was the decision made after listening to all perspectives? Was it top-down or consensus? What were the power-dynamics? Was it consensual?
What does it look like today?
Restorative justice rather than punishment.
Accessibility for the marginalized/overlooked: making spaces accessible (e.g. automatic doors, elevators, brail signs), digital accessibility (e.g. closed captions, color contrast), communication accessibility (e.g. sign interpreters, transcripts), and education accessibility (e.g. test accommodations, personalized learning).
Concerns about systemic evil such as systemic racism and sexism, economic inequality, and environmental justice.
Sensitivity concerns around language that might be offensive, including political correctness.
“Who are we to judge?”
“Who decides what’s ‘normal’?”
“It’s a systemic issue! Don’t punish the individuals — fix the system!”
“Check your privilege.”
“We have to decolonialize our minds.”
“Feelings are data.”
“Voting isn’t real justice — we need to listen to each other and come to consensus.”
How does it integrate?
Green moral reasoning is essential to account for the diversity of cultures, perspectives, and individual promptings. It’s also key for understanding the role we have to play in the construction of morality.
However, when this reasoning is used to the exclusion of a morality grounded in the 💙objective or 💙absolute, then it is in danger of falling apart. The pitfalls of Green reasoning include:
💚Endless relativism by which no decision can be made… decisions take forever (or are impossible) if everyone must be heard.
💚Giving up on morality, or even on the ability to perceive “truth” in the world.
💚Side-stepping responsibility or accountability. How can someone be punished for living their own truth? Or for the societal forces that shaped and drove them? What I as an individual really do in the face of corrupt systems?
💚Softness and chaos of both personal will and social organization. Often the lack of structure, rules, and hierarchy in Green organizations lead to their fragmentation, ineffectuality, or take-over by bad actors.
Note: It’s important here not to confuse Spiral values with Spiral moral reasoning. For instance, many people with Green values (eg: compassion and acceptance) use Blue moral reasoning: “I give money to anyone who asks, because that’s what Jesus said to do.” OR “In this community, we have a zero-tolerance policy on hate, and since you said xxxx word, you’re no longer welcome here.”
When well-grounded and spiritually/emotionally supported, 💚Green can use its tools of listening, empathy, and harmony to see the goodness within every color’s moral reasoning, and integrate them… which leads into 💛Yellow!
💙Blue establishes a moral right/wrong (black/white) ideal…
🧡Orange nuances this with context and consequentialism (shades of grey)…
💚Green sees all morality as personal or intersubjective (questioning the spectrum itself)…
💛Yellow integrates all the previous, seeing them all as true.
And that’s what we’ll be talking about in this series next, with 💛Both-And moral reasoning.
Also, Green may note that it’s not possible to ever have exactly the same situation, given interconnected reality, but we can compare externally similar-looking circumstances.
I personally view this as an immature Orange-Green perspective.
However a pure moral social-constructivism is shallow soil to try to grow a functioning morality. It must incorporate other moral reasonings, including a grounding in appeals to the 💙absolute.
I like some of these perspectives more than others, and accepting one does not imply acceptance of the others, but I share them together to show the breadth of 💚Green moral reasoning.